“You are not sufficiently humble, Mr. Ford,” said Katharine.
“It is not a question of humility, but of grace. I have not the gifts of Mr. Percival.”
Percival said nothing. He was graceful; why disclaim it?
“But you are very strong, John,” said Sylvia, with an intention of consolation. “And if not exactly graceful, I am sure you are very well shaped.”
Her hearers, including Ford himself, tried not to laugh, but failed. There was a burst of merriment.
“You think John does not need my encouragement?” said the little lady, looking at the laughers. “You think I forget how old he is? It is quite true, no doubt. But I remember him so well, you know, in his little white frock, with his dear little dimpled shoulders! He always would have bread and sugar, whether it was good for him or not, and he was so pretty and plump!”
These reminiscences provoked another peal.
“You may laugh,” said Miss Pitcher, nodding her head sagely, “but he did eat a great deal of sugar. Nothing else would content him but that bowl on the high shelf.”
“Do you still retain the same tastes, Mr. Ford?” said Katharine. “Do you still prefer what is out of reach—on a high shelf?”
“When one is grown,” said Ford, “there is very little that is absolutely out of reach. It is, generally speaking, a question merely of determination, and—a long arm.”
The sun sank; his rays came slanting under their tree, gilding the grass in bars. The conversation had taken a turn towards the society of the eighteenth century. Percival said the most. But a poet may well talk in a memorial garden, hushed and sunny, on a cushioned carpet under the trees, with a long-stemmed wineglass near his hand, and fair ladies listening in rapt attention. Ford, leaning back against his tree, was smoking a cigarette; it is to be supposed that he was listening also.
“Here is something I read the other day, at least as nearly as I can recall it,” said the speaker. He was gazing at the tops of the trees on the other side of the pond. He had a habit of fixing his eyes upon something high above his hearers’ heads when speaking. Men considered this an impertinence; but women had been known to allude to it as “dreamy.”
“‘Fair vanished ladies of the past,’” quoted the poet in his delightful voice, “‘so charming even in your errors, do you merit the judgment which the more rigid customs of our modern age would pronounce upon you? Was that enthusiasm for virtue and for lofty sentiments with which your delicious old letters and memoirs, written in faded ink and flowing language, with so much wit and so much bad spelling, are adorned—was it all declamation merely, because, weighed in our severer balances, your lives were not always in accordance with it? Are there not other balances? And were you not, even in your errors, seeking at least an ideal that was fair? Striving to replace by a sensibility most devoted and tender a morality which, in the artificial society that surrounded you, had become well-nigh impossible? Let us not forget how many of you, when the dread hour came, faced with unfaltering courage the horrors of the Revolution, sustained by your example the hearts of strong men which had failed them, and atoned on the red guillotine for the errors and follies of your whole generation with your delicate lives.’”
He paused. Then, in a lighter tone, added: “Charming vanished dames, in your powder and brocade, I salute you! I, for one, enroll myself among your faithful and tender admirers.”
Mr. Percival remained two weeks at Miolans. He was much with Mrs. Winthrop. They seemed to have subjects of their own for conversation, for on several occasions when Ford came over in the morning they were said to be “in the library,” and Miss Pitcher was obliged to confess that she did not feel at liberty to disturb them. She remarked, with a sigh, that it must be “very intellectual,” and once she asked her nephew if he had not noticed the poet’s “brow.”
“Oh yes; he is one of those tall, slim, long-faced, talking fellows whom you women are very apt to admire,” said Ford.
Miss Pitcher felt as much wrath as her gentle nature allowed. But again her sentiments were divided, and she sacrificed her personal feelings. That evening she confided to Katharine, under a pledge of deepest secrecy, her belief that “John” was “jealous.”
Mrs. Winthrop greeted this confidence with laughter. Not discouraged, the aunt the next day confided to her nephew her conviction that, as regarded the poet, Katharine had not yet “at all made up her mind.”
“That is rather cruel to Percival, isn’t it?” said Ford.
“Oh, he too has many, many friends,” said Sylvia, veering again.
“Fortunate fellow!”
At last Percival went. Ford was again the only visitor. And if he did not have long mornings in the library, he had portions not a few of afternoons in the garden. For if he came up the water-steps and found the mistress of the house sitting under the trees, with no other companion than a book, it was but natural that he should join her, and possibly make some effort to rival the printed page.
“You do not like driving?” she said, one day. They were in the parlor, and the carriage was coming round; she had invited him to accompany them, and he had declined.
“Not with a coachman, I confess.”
“There is always the phaeton,” she said, carelessly.
He glanced at her, but she was examining the border of her lace scarf. “On the whole, I prefer riding,” he answered, as though it were a question of general preferences.
“And Katharine rides so well!” said Sylvia, looking up from her wax flowers. Sylvia made charming wax flowers, generally water-lilies, because they were “so regular.”
“There are no good horses about here,” observed Ford. “I have tried them all. I presume at home in America you keep a fine one?”
“Oh, in America! That is too far off. I do not remember what I did in America,” answered Mrs. Winthrop.
A day or two later. “You were mistaken about there being no good saddle-horses here,” she remarked. “My coachman has found two; they are in the stable now.”
“If you are going to be kind enough to offer one of them to me,” he said, rather formally, after a moment’s silence, “I shall then have the pleasure of some rides with you, after all.”
“Yes,” answered Mrs. Winthrop. “As you say—after all!” She was smiling. He smiled too, but shook his head. Sylvia did not see this little by-play. Whatever it meant, however, it did not prevent Ford’s riding with Mrs. Winthrop several times, her groom following. Miss Pitcher watched these little excursions with much interest.
Meanwhile letters from Lorimer Percival came to Miolans almost daily. “That is the Percival crest,” said Sylvia to her nephew, one of these epistles, which had just arrived, being on the hall table, seal upward, as they passed. “So appropriate for a poet, I think—a flame.”
“Ah! I took it for steam,” said Ford.
Now the elder Percival had been a successful builder of locomotives. “John,” said Miss Pitcher, solemnly, “do you mean that for derision?”
“Derision, my dear aunt! There is nothing in the world so powerful as steam. If I only had more, I too might be a poet. Or if my father had had more, I too might have enjoyed a fortune.”
“Mr. Percival enjoys no fortune,” said Sylvia, still solemnly.
“What has he done with it, then? Enjoyed it all out?”
“He tells me that it dissolved, like a mist, in his grasp.”
“Yes; they call it by various names,” said Ford.
Mrs. Winthrop, dressed in her habit, now came down the stairway; she took the letter and put it in her pocket. That day the groom could not accompany them: the horse he rode was lame. “We are sufficiently brave to do without him for one afternoon, are we not?” said the lady.
“I confess I am timid; but I will do my best,” answered Ford, assisting her to mount. Sylvia, standing in the doorway, thought this a most unfortun
ate reply.
They rode southward. “Shall we stop for a few moments?” said Katharine, as they came towards Coppet.
“Yes; for ten,” he answered.
The old custodian let them in, and threw open the windows as before. The visitors went out on the little shelf-like balcony which opened from the drawing-room.
“You notice there is no view, or next to none,” said Ford, “although we are on the shore of Lake Leman, and under the shadow of Mont Blanc. They did not care for views in the eighteenth century—that is, views of the earth; they were all for views of the ‘soul.’ Madame de Staël detested the country; to the last, Coppet remained to her a dreary exile. She was the woman who frankly said that she would not cross the room to look at the Bay of Naples, but would walk twenty miles to talk with an agreeable man.”
“They were as rare then, it seems, as they are now,” said Mrs. Winthrop. “But to-day we go more than twenty miles; we go to Europe.”
“She did the same—that is, what was the same in her day; she went to Germany. There she found two rather agreeable men—Goethe and Schiller. Having found them, she proceeded to talk to them. They confessed to each other, long afterwards, the deep relief they felt when that gifted woman departed.”
“Ah, well, all she wanted, all she was seeking, was sympathy.”
“She should have waited until it came to her.”
“But if it never came?”
“It would—if she had not been so eager and voracious. The truth is, Corinne was an inordinate egotist. She expected all minds to defer to her superiority, while at the very moment she was engaged in extracting from them any poor little knowledge or ideas they might possess which could serve her own purposes. All her books were talked into existence; she talked them before she wrote them. It was her custom, at the dinner-table here at Coppet, to introduce the subject upon which she was engaged, and all her guests were expected, indeed forced, to discuss it with her in all its bearings, to listen to all she herself had to say, and never to depart from the given line by the slightest digression until she gave the signal. The next morning, closeted in her own room, she wrote out the results of all this, and it became a chapter.”
“She was a woman of genius, all the same,” said Mrs. Winthrop, in a disagreeing tone.
“A woman of genius! And what is the very term but a stigma? No woman is so proclaimed by the great brazen tongue of the Public unless she has thrown away her birthright of womanly seclusion for the miserable mess of pottage called ‘fame.’”
“The seclusion of a convent? or a prison?”
“Neither. Of a home.”
“You perhaps commend obedience, also?”
“In one way—yes.”
“I’m glad to know there are other ways.”
“I shall be very obedient to the woman I love in several of those other ways,” replied Ford, gathering some of the ripening grapes near the balcony rail.
Mrs. Winthrop went back into the faded drawing-room. “It is a pity there is no portrait here of Madame Récamier,” she remarked. “That you might have admired.”
“The ‘incomparable Juliette’ was at least not literary. But in another way she was as much before the public as though she had been what you call a woman of genius. It may be said, indeed, that she had genius—a genius for attracting admiration.”
“You are hard to please.”
“Not at all; I ask only the simple and retiring womanly graces. But anything retiring was hard to find in the eighteenth century.”
“You dislike literary women very much,” said Mrs. Winthrop. She had crossed the room to examine an old mirror made of squares of glass, welded together by little leaden frames, which had once been gilded.
“Hardly. I pity them.”
“You did not know, then, that I was one?”
He had crossed the room also, and was now standing behind her; as she asked the question she looked at his image in the glass.
“I did not know it,” he answered, looking at hers.
“I am, anonymously.”
“Better anonymously than avowedly.”
“Will you read something I have written?”
“Thanks. I am not in the least a critic.”
“I know that; you are too prejudiced, too narrow, to be one. All the same, will you read?”
“If you insist.”
“I do insist. What is more, I have it with me. I have had it for several days, waiting for a good opportunity.” She drew from her pocket a small flat package, and gave it to him.
“Must it be now?”
“Here and now. Where could we find a more appropriate atmosphere?”
He seated himself and opened the parcel; within was a small square book in flexible covers, in decoration paper and type, a daintily rich little volume.
“Ah! I know this,” he said. “I read it when it first came out.”
“So much the better. You can give me your opinion without the trouble of reading.”
“It received a good deal of praise, I remember,” he said, turning over the leaves.
She was silent.
“There was a charming little description somewhere—about going out on the Campagna to gather the wild narcissus,” he went on, after a pause.
And then there was another silence.
“But—” said Mrs. Winthrop.
“But, as you kindly suggest, I am no judge of poetry. I can say nothing of value.”
“Say it, valuable or not. Do you know, Mr. Ford, that you have scarcely spoken one really truthful word to me since we first met. Yet I feel sure that it does not come natural to you, and that it has cost you some trouble to—to—”
“To decorate, as I have, my plain speech. But if that is true, is it not a compliment?”
“And do I care for your compliments? I have compliments in abundance, and much finer ones than yours. What I want from you is the truth, your real opinion of that little volume in your hand. You are the only man I have met in years who seems to feel no desire to flatter me, to make me think well of myself. I see no reason why I should not think well of myself; but, all the same, I am curious. I can see that you judge me impartially, even severely.”
She paused. He did not look up or disclaim; he went on turning the pages of the little volume.
She had not seated herself; she was standing beside a table opposite him. “I can see that you do not in the least like me,” she added, in a lower tone.
“My dear lady, you have so many to like you!” said Ford.
And then he did look up; their eyes met.
A flush came to her cheeks. He shut the little book and rose.
“Really, I am too insignificant a victim,” he said, bowing as he returned it.
“You mean that I—that I have tried—”
“Oh no; you do it naturally.”
For the moment her self-possession had failed her. But now she had it in hand again. “If I have tried, naturally or artificially, I have made a failure—have I not?”
“It must be a novel experience for Mrs. Winthrop.”
She turned away and looked at a portrait of Voltaire. After some moments, “Let us come back to the real point between us,” she said, as he did not speak—“that is, your opinion of my little book.”
“Is that the real point between us?”
“Of course it is. We will walk up and down Corinne’s old rooms, and you shall tell me as we walk.”
“Why do you force me to say unpleasant things?”
“They are unpleasant, then? I knew it! Unpleasant for me.”
“For us both.”
“For you, I doubt it. For me, they cannot be more unpleasant than the things you have already said. Yet you see I forgive them.”
“Yes; but I have not forgiven you, Mrs. Winthrop.”
“For what, pray?”
“For proposing to make me a victim.”
“Apparently you had small difficulty in escaping.”
“As you say—apparently. But perhaps I conceal my wounds.”
“You are trying to turn the subject, so that I will not insist about the little book.”
“I wish, indeed, that you would not insist.”
“But if I am the sort of woman you have indicated, I should think you would enjoy punishing me a little.”
“A little, perhaps. But the punishment would be too severe.”
They were walking slowly through the rooms; she turned her head and looked at him. “I have listened to you, Mr. Ford; I have let you say pretty much what you pleased to me, because it was amusing. But you cannot seriously believe that I really care for what you say, severe or otherwise?”
“Only as any right-minded woman must care.”
“Say on. Now I insist.”
“Good-bye to Miolans, then. You will never admit me within its gates again; that is, unless you have the unusual justice—unusual in a woman—to see that what I say is but the severity of a true friend.”
“A friend is not severe.”
“Yes, he is; in such a case as this, must be.”
“Go on. I will decide afterwards.”
They entered the third room. Ford reflected a moment; then began. “The poem, which you now tell me is yours, had, as its distinguishing feature, a certain daring. Regarding its other points: its rhythm was crude and unmelodious; its coloring was exaggerated—reading it, one was cloyed with color; its logic—for there was an attempt at logic—was utterly weak.” He paused. Mrs. Winthrop was looking straight before her at the wall across the end of the last room in the vista. Her critic did not lift his eyes, but transferred his gaze from one section of the dark old floor to the next as they walked onward.
“All this, however,” he resumed, “could be forgiven. We do not expect great poems from women any more than we expect great pictures; we do not expect strong logic any more than we expect brawny muscle. A woman’s poetry is subjective. But what cannot be forgiven—at least in my opinion—is that which I have called the distinguishing feature of the volume, a certain sort of daring. This is its essential, unpardonable sin. Not because it is in itself dangerous; it has not force enough for that; but because it comes, and can be recognized at once as coming, from the lips of a woman. For a woman should not dare in that way. Thinking to soar, she invariably descends. Her mental realm is not the same as that of man; lower, on the same level, or far above, it is at least different. And to see her leave it, and come in all her white purity, which must inevitably be soiled, to the garish arena where men are contending, where the dust is rising, and the air is tainted and heavy—this is indeed a painful sight. Every honest man feels like going to her, poor mistaken sibyl that she is, closing her lips with gentle hand, and leading her away to some far spot among the quiet fields, where she can learn her error, and begin her life anew. To the pity of it is added the certain truth that if the words she sang could be carried out to their logical end, if they were to be clothed in the hard realities of life and set up before her, they would strike first the poor creature who was chanting them, and crush her to the dust. Fortunately there is no danger of this; it is among the impossibilities. And sometimes the poor sibyls learn, and through the teachings of their own hearts, their great mistake.” As he ended, for the first time he lifted his eyes from the floor and looked at her.
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